"I am an invisible man." Those words, pecked out on an old typewriter one night in the Vermont hills, began a literary work of unparalleled beauty and power. Ralph Waldo Ellison; encouraged to make music and to write by his father; inspired by the civil rights activism of his mother, began to record that night a spiritual journey of rich, complex, profound proportions. It would take him seven years to record that journey, but it had taken him a lifetime to live the journey.
Or perhaps it would be better to say, it had taken the accumulated lifetimes of an entire people to compile that journey.
The novel "Invisible Man" was published in 1947, and became the first book by an African-American author to receive the National Book Award. It has been studied, argued about, thought over, reacted to, and felt many times since. Its author made his entire reputation on that one book. Though he wrote essays and short stories, when Ralph Ellison died just last year, it was "Invisible Man" for which he was known and celebrated.
I
Again, his opening line, "I am an invisible man." Think with me for a moment about what it means to be invisible.
Some people are invisible to us because they live in a whole different set of circumstances. They work at different jobs, live in different neighborhoods, attend other kinds of churches, have friends other than ours. We never really see their world. Some people are invisible, because they just move in different circles.
For example, whenever we have a snowy day, and the radio begins to announce cancellations, I am always amazed at the kinds of groups which are out there and the kinds of things they do that I never knew anything about. The radio announcer will say that the Cambodian Buddhist temple’s Lotus celebration has been postponed, and wow, I don’t know any Cambodians and I don’t know any Buddhists, and therefore I certainly don’t know any Cambodian Buddhists, nor do I have any idea what a Lotus celebration is ... a whole cluster of folks whose very existence I hardly even knew of. Invisible because they live in a whole different set of circumstances.
Ralph Ellison, writing in the 1940’s, had that kind of invisibility in mind. Legal segregation as well as segregation enforced by custom created that kind of invisibility. White people and black people didn’t see each other or deal with each other, except in very controlled situations, because they lived in completely separated worlds. Maybe it would shock you to know that I cannot remember knowing any African-Americans until I went to college in the ’50’s, not by choice, but by circumstance. They were invisible to me and I to them.
But there is another level of invisibility. There is another way for someone to become an invisible man. And that is to choose not to see. To deliberately ignore someone, to act as if they do not matter. You can make somebody invisible in the sense that you just don’t take them seriously. They don’t count, they don’t matter, they don’t figure in. It is not just that circumstances keep you apart; it is that you choose to act as if the other person is not even there. I know you’ve all heard the stories about how in slave times the masters would talk openly and candidly to each other around their slaves, as if the slaves weren’t even there. They were being treated as if they were invisible.
Now that is a serious spiritual issue. That is much more devastating than having to live in a segregated society. To be treated as though you were invisible, nobody’s nothing, that’s corrosive to the soul.
And so Ralph Ellison explains what he means by calling himself "Invisible Man": He says, "I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me."
"Invisible Man" then becomes a rich tapestry of images, word pictures, poetry ... a symphony of language. One of Ellison’s most powerful images is a hole; he speaks of being in a hole, a dark, black hole; but a hole which is lighted with precisely one thousand, three hundred sixty-nine bright light bulbs. Go figure that one out! When he is out of the hole, he speaks of struggles, battles, and disappointments. He speaks of trying to do the right thing as those around him defined the right thing. But he could never be seen, he could never be understood, he could never become a part of that larger world he could see from inside his deep hole.
An invisible man. Someone who cannot be seen for who and what he really is and wants to be. Remember? "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
II
May I take you back, well before Ralph Ellison, well before the African-American experience? May I take you back to another invisible man, to someone else not well understood, not well accepted?
It had been only a short while since the confession at Caesarea Philippi. That little episode had demonstrated that the disciples were struggling to see who this Jesus was. What category do you put him in? Does he matter or is he a madman? Do we pay attention or do we ignore him? Some said one thing, some said another; but one of them, Peter, was beginning to see something else: "You are the Christ, the son of the living God."
Yet essentially Jesus was an invisible man. Few took him seriously; even fewer wanted to follow him. He might just as well have been hiding in a deep, dark hole, invisible.
But then came this experience called transfiguration. Six days after the confession at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus took Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain. And there he was transfigured before them … that is, he was changed, he was transformed … and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling bright. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
And a little later, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ’’This is my son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him."
And when the disciples looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. Jesus, who had been invisible … that is, whose importance they didn’t see ... was now all they could see! This experience had changed Him in their eyes!
III
May I suggest two things we can learn about invisibility from this transfiguration experience? Two things that need to happen for the invisible to become visible, for the don’t-matter folks to become somebodies?
a
First, Jesus became visible when the disciples saw him in his historical context. They had only barely begun to figure out who he was, but when they saw him with Moses and Elijah, they woke up. They saw that he had a history. They saw that he came from somewhere. He didn’t just sort of land on the planet like some space traveler. He wasn’t just a piece of flotsam and jetsam, a historical accident. Standing with Moses and Elijah, they could now see that he was connected with them. Connected with Moses, the liberator of their people and the giver of their laws. Jesus was part of a history that went back to the banks of the Red Sea and the story of their freedom. And then they saw that he was connected with Elijah, the prophet who stood up against the powerful and who spoke the truth, no matter what the cost. On the mount of transfiguration, all of a sudden the disciples could see that Jesus was really connected with where they came from. He wasn’t invisible any more; he was a part of them.
That’s exactly why we have Black History Month. That’s why we go through this exercise every year. We do it to remind anyone who will see it that this is a people with a real history. This is a people with a context and a culture, and it is a proud one.
But if you do not see that history, if you do not know that culture, then you will be like Ralph Ellison’s invisible man, down in a hole, bound and constrained, unappreciated and set on the margins. One of the things the Invisible Man does to himself in the novel is to hide, hide from himself and hide from his culture. He is so busy trying to please everybody who puts any demands on him that he can’t be himself. He even speaks in one place of being ashamed of being ashamed! "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
We are going to be invisible to others and invisible to ourselves until we see that we have a cultural and historical context, and that it’s good. When they saw Jesus with Moses and Elijah, all of a sudden they saw that he was somebody.
b
But there’s something else. Something else made the invisible Jesus suddenly become visible to Peter and James and John. And that is that now they saw him in the light of what God had called him to be. Now they saw him in the light of eternity. It was one thing to walk the dusty roads of Galilee and hear him preach; it was another thing altogether to hear the father identify him as His son. It was one thing to be present at a healing miracle, impressive though it was; but it was another thing altogether to know that the creator of the ends of the earth was saying, "With him I am well pleased." They saw Jesus in the light of God’s plan for His life.
And nobody can remain invisible when very God cries out, "Listen to him". Listen to him, look at him, He matters! When the disciples finally saw that the hand of God was on Jesus, they took him seriously. You see, it makes a difference when you see someone else in the light of God’s call; you cannot shove aside someone when you discover that he is a child of God.
That too is a theme for us in this Black History Month. To learn deep down that others who are not like us are nonetheless children of God, called by God for purposes of his own. To find out that that person who seems so difficult, so distasteful, so unpleasant … that that person is someone God loves, someone for whom Christ died. That changes things.
To know that that awkward, impossible-to-understand person, that guy who seems to be so hostile, that woman who appears to be so suspicious ... to wake up to the fact that they too are children of God, that they have a place in the eternal plan of God, that they matter in the sight of God whether or not my social circle cares about them at all. To do that is to take away their invisibility. Once you see a person in the plan of God, you cannot choose to treat him as if her were invisible.
When those disciples heard that voice from the cloud cry out, "This is my chosen, listen to him", they could never ignore Jesus again. They could never put him on the sidelines again. And I believe that when you and I truly wake up to the fact that our God has made of one blood all races of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and has given each of them a place in his plan, then we can no longer avoid seeing them and caring for them. They have a place in God’s eternity.
Many of us grew up singing a little ditty, but I am not sure we really heard it. Do you remember? "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." The point is that they are in his sight, all of them, and you and I cannot ignore them. However different, however distant, however much of a chasm there is between people of different races and cultures, they are precious in his sight. I have to see them. I must see them. "This is my chosen; listen to him. See him."
IV
"I am an invisible man." "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me." I wonder who exactly is invisible to us today. Who is there sitting in a hole, staring up at a world of opportunity and acceptance and love, feeling hidden away? Who is there who is invisible simply because we have refused to see them?
Would it still, after all these years of struggle, be persons of another race? Would it be Asians, some of whom worship in our building week after week, but whom we have never taken the time to meet? Are they invisible? Would it be Hispanics or Ethiopians or Nigerians? Racism doesn’t feel any better when it is practiced by those against whom it has been practiced. Now is our time to find common ground with all people who have felt the heel of oppression through the years.
Who is invisible simply because we have refused to see them? Would it be persons who speak a different language? Spanish, Indian, Korean, Iranian, Vietnamese, scores of people we sort of put up with and wish they would get on with learning English? But you see, language carries history and culture, and maybe when we make laws that rule out other languages, we are telling these folks to become invisible. Now is our time to listen to them, just as the Lord told us to listen to Christ.
Who else is invisible to us? Would it be young people? Have we come to the place where some of us are so afraid of our own children that we are bar the gates against them and avoid them? What do you feel when you are walking down the street and four or five young men come toward you? Are they or are they not children of God, precious in His sight? Red and yellow, black and white … who will love these children? Now is our time to make a difference with some young person on the edge of trouble.
Who else is invisible to us? Maybe it would even be lost people. Do you understand what I mean when I say lost people? I am talking about men and women, boys and girls, who do not know Christ as their savior. They too have become invisible to us. We don’t want to face the fact that there are hundreds of all around us who are lost in their sins and who are dying that way. We are so much in love with our own comfort we have even chosen not to see those who need Christ. God forgive us and convict us!
Who is invisible to us? Who have we put on the margins? Who are we discounting as of no importance? The last line of Ellison’s "Invisible Man" says, "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" I take it he means that as long as anyone is invisible, all are in danger. Not very far from what Mordecai said to Queen Esther, “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
And who else is invisible to us? Who else is there we still have not seen, for we choose not to see him? I say Jesus Christ is still invisible. I say that in our time and in our world we still ignore Jesus Christ. I say that "He had no form nor comeliness that we should desire Him. For he was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."
Have you put Jesus Christ on the margin of your life? Have you chosen to avoid the issues of what you will do with Christ? Have you rendered Him invisible simply because you have refused to see Him? Have you ignored Him, explained Him away, discounted Him, avoided Him? Yes, he is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And yes, we have hidden as it were our faces from him, he was despised and we esteemed him not. But surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. Now is our time.
Now is our time to do something about the lingering disease of racism, yes. Now is our time to lift up the fallen and to befriend the friendless, of course. Now is our time to make visible the invisible.
But first, now is our time to see the immortal, invisible God only wise, now is our time to accept the word made flesh and dwelling among us. For here we behold His glory, full of grace and truth.
Now is your time to receive Jesus Christ as lord. If you want to make a difference, begin there. Lift Him up. Make Him visible. Let Him be your lord. Now is the time. Is it your time?
